Patriotic high...actress Mala Sinha presenting the "Jayamala" programme for the armed forces, on Vividh Bharati (1965).
The latest available figure is based on 1998-99 information, and it puts the number of average actual listeners of AIR on any day in radio homes all over India at 28.4 crores, and the radio sets in that year at 11.4 crores. For radio sets a 2002 figure is also available: 12.5 crores, so assuming the same three listeners per household, listenership today might be in the range of 30 crore to 36 crore listeners a day, if it has remained steady.
TV on the other hand assumes five viewers per household and that puts the TV audience in India on par with what the listening is for radio, given 7.5 crores or more TV homes. For a poor, developing country, that makes rather poor sense: the potential for radio listening should surely be much greater? By way of comparison, BBC World Service this year put its latest listeners figures for how many listen to its service in any given week at 150 million or 15 crores worldwide, and declared that it had lost some 12 million listeners (1.2 crores) in India over the last year. It put down the decline in India to the fact that radio listening in India has fallen dramatically in recent years.
Only one in four Indians now listens to radio regularly — half the number of a decade ago, it said. But the fact that BBC is on shortwave could also have something to do with it, because the audience is increasingly turning to FM, with some 55 per cent of all radio sets (7.1 crores) in India now having the FM facility.
One indication of the lack of excitement over radio is the slow growth in the number of radio sets available. In 10 years from 1992 to 2002, satellite TV households have grown from nothing to 40 million. In comparison from 1991 to 2002, radio sets have grown in number by no more than 30 million. The growth of FM is changing that — with the hype created by half a dozen private radio stations in Mumbai, cheap transistors now sell at street corners in that city.
It is interesting to look at AIR's 2001 city by city figures for what they are worth. Delhi and Kolkata report that in radio households, listening to AIR is down rather sharply, both for the primary channel as well as Vividh Bharati, with 50 to 60 per cent reporting that they listen to it either very occasionally or never. In Mumbai though, around 35 per cent of listeners tune in on all days of the week, for both channels. In Jaipur, Indore, Bhopal, Dharwad, Nagpur, Coimbatore and Tiruchirapalli there is daily listening to Vividh Bharati in more than 50 per cent of sampled households.
On the other hand in Guwahati while close to 60 per cent said it did not listen to Vividh Bharati even once or twice a week, the same number said it listens to the primary channel every day. In Tiruchirapalli, daily listening is very high for both channels, as it is in Dharwad, and Coimbatore.
In Bangalore, however, 50 per cent listened to Vividh Bharati one day in the week or less, but 42 per cent did listen to the primary channel every day of the week. The sampling method was to take a hundred urban and a hundred rural households in 30 centres across the country. Thus the figures represent both rural and urban listening. As for time of listening, the maximum listening takes place between six and 10 in the morning.
What is listened to most is of course music. The one-hour programme "Chitralok" broadcast at 8.15 a.m. for 60 minutes has some 2.5 crore radio owners tuning in everyday. To sustain its staple diet of music, AIR has a complex ranging of talent hunts, gradings and audition boards in place, and particularly in the South, parents go searching for "A" grade artists to tutor their wards in classical music. For AIR's 76 local radio stations, there are no comprehensive listening statistics.
For one growing segment of users, AIR is turning out to be excellent value for money, and that is the non governmental sector wanting to do public interest programmes. Increasingly they are taking sponsored slots on it for programmes on family welfare, or adult education, or aimed at groups with disabilities. When a foundation in Chennai did that recently, they reported that the response was overwhelming, and a Delhi-based foundation doing family welfare has also found it a medium that delivers the target audience it wants.
If it can consolidate its present network instead of expanding it (Information and Broadcasting Minister Sushma Swaraj is going to lay the foundation stone for an FM station at Bellary), if Prasar Bharati's energies were not dissipated because of internal backbiting between the current Chief Executive Officer and the former one who is now on the PB Board, if recruitment rules could be framed and the corporation's own cadres created, AIR could begin to script a purposeful revival at the ripe age of 75. Unlike Doordarshan, it has not as yet been beaten by competition.
But AIR is only one major actor in India's rediscovery of radio. There are others. The upper end listener has come back into the fold because of World Space, the satellite radio company whose high priced sets allow you to get high quality reception of radio stations from all over the world. In fact All India Radio has also taken transponders on World Space.
The latest available figure is based on 1998-99 information, and it puts the number of average actual listeners of AIR on any day in radio homes all over India at 28.4 crores, and the radio sets in that year at 11.4 crores. For radio sets a 2002 figure is also available: 12.5 crores, so assuming the same three listeners per household, listenership today might be in the range of 30 crore to 36 crore listeners a day, if it has remained steady.
TV on the other hand assumes five viewers per household and that puts the TV audience in India on par with what the listening is for radio, given 7.5 crores or more TV homes. For a poor, developing country, that makes rather poor sense: the potential for radio listening should surely be much greater? By way of comparison, BBC World Service this year put its latest listeners figures for how many listen to its service in any given week at 150 million or 15 crores worldwide, and declared that it had lost some 12 million listeners (1.2 crores) in India over the last year. It put down the decline in India to the fact that radio listening in India has fallen dramatically in recent years.
Only one in four Indians now listens to radio regularly — half the number of a decade ago, it said. But the fact that BBC is on shortwave could also have something to do with it, because the audience is increasingly turning to FM, with some 55 per cent of all radio sets (7.1 crores) in India now having the FM facility.
One indication of the lack of excitement over radio is the slow growth in the number of radio sets available. In 10 years from 1992 to 2002, satellite TV households have grown from nothing to 40 million. In comparison from 1991 to 2002, radio sets have grown in number by no more than 30 million. The growth of FM is changing that — with the hype created by half a dozen private radio stations in Mumbai, cheap transistors now sell at street corners in that city.
It is interesting to look at AIR's 2001 city by city figures for what they are worth. Delhi and Kolkata report that in radio households, listening to AIR is down rather sharply, both for the primary channel as well as Vividh Bharati, with 50 to 60 per cent reporting that they listen to it either very occasionally or never. In Mumbai though, around 35 per cent of listeners tune in on all days of the week, for both channels. In Jaipur, Indore, Bhopal, Dharwad, Nagpur, Coimbatore and Tiruchirapalli there is daily listening to Vividh Bharati in more than 50 per cent of sampled households.
On the other hand in Guwahati while close to 60 per cent said it did not listen to Vividh Bharati even once or twice a week, the same number said it listens to the primary channel every day. In Tiruchirapalli, daily listening is very high for both channels, as it is in Dharwad, and Coimbatore.
In Bangalore, however, 50 per cent listened to Vividh Bharati one day in the week or less, but 42 per cent did listen to the primary channel every day of the week. The sampling method was to take a hundred urban and a hundred rural households in 30 centres across the country. Thus the figures represent both rural and urban listening. As for time of listening, the maximum listening takes place between six and 10 in the morning.
What is listened to most is of course music. The one-hour programme "Chitralok" broadcast at 8.15 a.m. for 60 minutes has some 2.5 crore radio owners tuning in everyday. To sustain its staple diet of music, AIR has a complex ranging of talent hunts, gradings and audition boards in place, and particularly in the South, parents go searching for "A" grade artists to tutor their wards in classical music. For AIR's 76 local radio stations, there are no comprehensive listening statistics.
For one growing segment of users, AIR is turning out to be excellent value for money, and that is the non governmental sector wanting to do public interest programmes. Increasingly they are taking sponsored slots on it for programmes on family welfare, or adult education, or aimed at groups with disabilities. When a foundation in Chennai did that recently, they reported that the response was overwhelming, and a Delhi-based foundation doing family welfare has also found it a medium that delivers the target audience it wants.
If it can consolidate its present network instead of expanding it (Information and Broadcasting Minister Sushma Swaraj is going to lay the foundation stone for an FM station at Bellary), if Prasar Bharati's energies were not dissipated because of internal backbiting between the current Chief Executive Officer and the former one who is now on the PB Board, if recruitment rules could be framed and the corporation's own cadres created, AIR could begin to script a purposeful revival at the ripe age of 75. Unlike Doordarshan, it has not as yet been beaten by competition.
But AIR is only one major actor in India's rediscovery of radio. There are others. The upper end listener has come back into the fold because of World Space, the satellite radio company whose high priced sets allow you to get high quality reception of radio stations from all over the world. In fact All India Radio has also taken transponders on World Space.